What Churches are Loosing Membership?

Catholics and Southern Baptist according to the Washington Times report recently.  The Southern Baptist lost 40,000 members last year which is a very small percentage of a total of 16.2 MM members I believe.  But a loss is not as good as an even or a gain.

President Obama’s denomination, United Church of Christ, lost 6 % of membership last year.   Maybe it is because they allow ministers in the pulpit who preach unbiblical, ethnocentric, Black theology.

Here is a listing of some of the top denominations from the Washington Times:

The Roman Catholic Church, 67,117,06 members, down 0.59 percent. (Ranked 1)

The Southern Baptist Convention, 16,266,920 members, down 0.24 percent. (Ranked 2)

The United Methodist Church, 7,931,733 members, down 0.80 percent. (Ranked 3)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 5,873,408 members, up 1.63 percent .(Ranked 4)

The Church of God in Christ, 5,499,875 members, no change reported. (Ranked 5)

National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., 5,000,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 6)

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 4,709,956 members, down 1.35 percent. (Ranked 7)

National Baptist Convention of America, Inc., 3,500,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 8 )

Presbyterian Church (USA), 2,941,412 members, down 2.79 percent (Ranked 9)

Assemblies of God, 2,863,265 members, up 0.96 percent. (Ranked 10)

African Methodist Episcopal Church, 2,500,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 11)

National Missionary Baptist Convention of America, 2,500,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 11)

Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc., 2,500,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 11)

The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS), 2,383,084 members, down 1.44 percent. (Ranked 14)

The Episcopal Church, 2,116,749 members, down 1.76 percent. (Ranked 15)

Churches of Christ, 1,639,495 members, no change reported. (Ranked 16)

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, 1,500,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 17)

Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc., 1,500,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 17)

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 1,400,000 members, down 3.01 percent. (Ranked 19)

American Baptist Churches in the USA, 1,358,351, down 0.94 percent. (Ranked 20)

Baptist Bible Fellowship International, 1,200,000, no change reported. (Ranked 21)

United Church of Christ, 1,145,281 members, down 6.01 percent. (Ranked 22)

Jehovah’s Witnesses, 1,092,169 members, up 2.12 percent (Ranked 23)

Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, 1,071,616 members, no change reported. (Ranked 24)

Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.), 1,053,642 members, up 2.04 percent. (Ranked 25)

King James and Gail Riplinger

King James I refer to in the title here is the King James I of England who brought us, not the first English version of the Bible, but one that has had the greatest lasting legacy.

Gail Riplinger is a fan of King James.  In fact, she is such a fan that she believes that God’s intervention in the gathering of the manuscripts and the translation of these manuscripts into the 1611 King James or Authorized Version of the Bible was such that made this version of the English Bible God-inspired along to the status of the original autographs.  We don’t have the original autographs of the Hebrew and Greek manuscipts.

Again Gail so loves King James that she went on a witch hunt for “dirt” on the men who collected a competing (so to speak) set of Greek manuscripts to those from which King James’ translators translated.  These men are Westcott and Hort.  They lived in England and gathered other sets of manuscripts on which the Nestle and Aland’s Greek New Testament is based.  The Nestle and Aland versions are revisted and revised as needed as new manuscripts are discovered and added to this manuscript collection.

Ms. Riplinger does not like the Nestle and Aland because she has determined that Westcott and Hort who lived in the 1800s were spiritists.  According to many authors, there was a Westcott  living in England at near the same time as the Westcott of Westcott and Hort who was a spiritist, however,  it has been confirmed by birth and death records that these could not be the same Westcott.  So she, Ms. Riplinger, has misapplied the spirituality of an honorable man Mr B. F. Westcott with the lifestyle of a W. W. Westcott.

Bottom line is that Ms. Riplinger cannot be believed regarding her research into the Textus Receptus collection of manuscripts,  the Alexanderian collection, nor regarding he findings regarding Westcott and Hort who has brought us a fine rendering of the Greek from the greek manuscripts in the Greek New Testament.  For more information on Gail Riplinger, click here.

I like what a Mr. Douglas Kutilek said about the groups of texts we have available for supporting translation work:

In truth, all text families are doctrinally orthodox. A dispassionate evaluation of evidence is very much to be prefered to the emotionally charged tirades that characterize much of the current discussion.

What Ms. Riplinger fails to realize is that God in Heaven is interested in the translation of the Greek and Hebrew texts into all languages in the world and not just English.

If she is so interested in translation work, there is much for her to do over at Wycliffe Bible Translators.

The Crisis of Credit

Lots of explanations exist that explain the world’s current financial woes.  Here are two short videos which describe the basic concepts of why so many financial institutions around the world and even a country or two went belly up at the end of 2008 or even in 2009.

Enjoy!!!

Have a wonderful day and throw us a comment!!!

Is Jesus God? He spoke the greatest words ever spoken

Jesus said about his own words, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away” Luke 21:33

It was common for the crowds who heard Him to be “astonished at His teaching” Luke 4:32.  Even a Roman officer exclaimed, “No one ever spoke like this Man!” John 7:46

Statistically speaking, the Gospels are the greatest literature ever written. They are read by more people, quoted by more authors, translated into more tongues, represented in more art, set to more music, than any other book or books written by any man in any century in any land. But the words of Christ are not great on the grounds that they have such a statistical edge over any body else’s words. They are read more, quoted more, loved more, believed more, and translated more because they are the greatest words ever spoken. And where is their greatness? Their greatness lies in the pure, lucid spirituality in dealing clearly, definitively, and authoritatively with the greatest problems that throb in the human breast; namely, Who is God? Does He love me? What should I do to please Him? How does He look at my sin? How can I be forgiven? Where will I go when I die? How must I treat others? No other man’s words have the appeal of Jesus’ words because no other man can answer these fundamental human questions as Jesus answered them. They are the kind of words and the kind of answers we would expect God to give, and we who believe in Jesus’ deity have no problem as to why these words came from His mouth.
Ramm, Protestant Christian Evidences, 170-171

Napoleon:

Never did the Speaker seem to stand more utterly alone than when He uttered this majestic utterance. Never did it seem more improbable that it should be fulfilled. But as we look across the centuries we see how it has been realized. His words have passed into law, they have passed into doctrines, they have passed into proverbs, they have passed into consolations, but they have never ‘passed away.’ What human teacher ever dared to claim an eternity for his words?  G. F. Maclean, Cambridge Bible for Schools, 149

Though without formal rabbinical training, He showed no timidity or self-consciousness, no hesitation as to what He felt to be truth. Without any thought of Himself or His audience, He spoke out fearlessly on every occasion, utterly heedless of the consequences to Himself, and only concerned for truth and the delivery of His Father’s message. The power of His teaching was also deeply felt. “His word was with power” Luke 4:32. The spiritual force of His personality expressed itself in His utterances and held His hearers in its enthralling grasp. And so we are not surprised to read of the impression of uniqueness made by Him. “Never man spoke like this man” John 7:46. The simplicity and charm and yet the depth, the directness, the universality, and the truth of His teaching made a deep mark on His hearers, and elicited the conviction that they were in the presence of a Teacher such as man had never known before. And thus the large proportion of teaching in the Gospels, and the impressions evidently created by the Teacher Himself, are such that we are not at all surprised that years afterward the great Apostle of the Gentiles should recall these things and say, “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus” Acts 20:35. The same impression has been made in every age since the days of Christ and His immediate followers, and in any full consideration of His person as the substance of Christianity great attention must necessarily be paid to His teaching.  W. H. Griffith Thomas, Christianity Is Christ, 32

Please comment below or pass on through a reading service?

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Lady Jane – the Movie

I took the opportunity to see this movie last night.  What a movie it was!!   Having visited England and Scotland,  I now enjoy the rich history of the country.

This  was more than rich history.  The movie portrays some of what I perceive as weakness of the culture of the elite of England at the time.  One being, arranged marriages, in this case.  Now, but this arranged marriage of two misfit for one another, shows God’s interventions into the evil intents and missteps of man.

Jane is married off to the son of a plotting, conniving, and powerful John Dudley.  Guilford, the son, is a low life and living in the gutter most of he adult life.  Yet,  that marriage to Jane eventually totally changes him.  Actually, though not portrayed in the movie, I believe God Himself intervened in his life and Guilford became a follower of Jesus in the process.   Soon into the movie the two give themselves to one another in a marital commitment and their holy causes.   I say holy because I believe their goals and visions were of God.  What a picture of the way God would have marriages to be.

Jane is a Reformer and spends most of her early teen days studying and praying.  She is a real saint.

The outcome is not good but because of all that came from their lives, the movie has a real redeeming quality.  It is definitely worth the watch.   I know it came out about 14 years ago but it is still around and DVD play like they are new.

The movie trailer.

Confessions of Unbelievers: Goethe

Final Home of Goethe

I am going to have to come up with a consistent title of this series of blogs and these great quotes from men of the past.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in English was a German writer and according to George Eliot, “Germany’s greatest man of letters… and the last true polymath to walk the earth.” Goethe’s works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, humanism and science. Goethe’s magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part drama Faust. Goethe’s other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Goethe,  admirer of intellectual and aesthetic aspects of Bible:

It is a belief in the Bible, the fruits of deep meditation, which has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life.  No criticism will be able to perplex the confidence which we have entertained of a writing whose contents have stirred up and given life to our vital energy by its own.  The farther the ages advance in civilization, the more will the bible be used.

As with any topic here we are open to your comments below or would you pass it on through a reading service?

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More “Christian Thought” from 1885

The following thoughts come from non-Christian men.  These statements are found in Christian Thought, a book published in 1885.  I marvel today, 2009, at how open and frankly unbiased men were to express themselves this way in that day and before.

They are entirely free from all bias in favor of Christianity.  And yet these all make concessions, which, if admitted and pressed to their logical and legitimate results, render it far more unreasonable to deny that Christ and the Bible are what they claim to be than to admit these claims.

Deems, Devins and Howe are talking about men such as Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Rousseau, Daniel Webster, De Tocqueville, Napoleon Bonaparte, Denis Diderot, Goethe, Matthew Arnold, Professor Huxley, Celsus, Lucian, Prophyry, Julian the Apostate, Spinoza, Thomas Chubb, Pecaut, Fichte, Richter, David F. Strauss, F. C. Baur, Paulus, Byron, Gregg, Thomas Carlyle, James Anthony Froude, Thomas Decker, Charles dickens, William Shakespeare, Lecky, Theodore Parker, Frances P. Cobbe, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Paine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Sumner, and Ernest Renan.

Many of these statements or quotes of well known men I will list here and have some comments.

In fact,  because I love Napoleon Bonaparte I will give yet another of his quotes.  Napoleon Bonaparte, wrote in exile:

The Bible contains a complete series of facts and of historical men to explain time and eternity such as no other religion has to offer.  If it is not the true religion, one is very excusable in being deceived; for everything in it is grand and worthy of God.  The more I consider the Gospel, the more I am assured that there is nothing there which is not beyond the march of events and above the human mind.  Even the impious themselves have never dared to deny the sublimity of the Gospel which inspires them with a sort of compulsory veneration.  What happiness that book procures for those who believe it!!!!

Thank you Mr. Bonaparte!!!

In many writings of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries I see the word “sublimity” often.   I had a general understanding of it but just looked it up.  Here is what it means.

1. Characterized by nobility; majestic.

2. a. Of high spiritual, moral, or intellectual worth.

b. Not to be excelled; supreme.

3. Inspiring awe; impressive.

I hope that helps.

Please give us your comments on these men or on their considerations of Christ and the Bible.

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Confessions of Unbelievers

I recently came across this book:

Christian Thought: Lectures and Papers on Philosophy, Christian Evidence, Biblical Elucidation … By Charles Force Deems, John Bancroft Devins, American Institute of Christian Philosophy, Amory Howe Bradford Published by W. B. Ketcham., 1885

and I found many gems in there in a chapter titled:  Concessions of Unbelievers.   I want to share some of the quotes from this work of the late 1800’s because we face some of the same people today.

I love what one of the authors shared regarding a view of unbelievers and Jesus.

If they will only concede of Jesus Christ that he is the best and purest man that ever lived–the highest type of manhood of which we have any record–that is all we desire of them; we can then prove, in view of His faultless humanity and of His divine claims, that His divinity must follow as an inevitable conclusion. If they, again, will only admit as to the Bible that it is the best book in all the literature of the world in its moral influence upon mankind individually and collectively, that is all we desire of them; we can then prove, in view of its character and its claims, that its divine inspiration and authority must follow as a necessary result.

I have quoted Napoleon in this blog if not in howtoknowgod.wordpress.com.  However in Christian Thought,  I found a more complete statement by Napoleon that is wonderful.  I have decided to use it first in these confessions.  Here it is in an observation by one who is becoming a favorite author of mine.

“Napoleon Bonaparte,” says Dr. Schaff, “reasoning from the overpowering authority and dignity of Christ as a teacher, from the amazing result of His peaceful mission and the imperishable nature of His kingdom as contrasted with the vanity of all human conquests and secular empires, justly inferred that Christ was more than man, that He was truly divine, and that His divinity is the key which unlocks the mysteries of Christianity.”  “I know men,”  said Napoleon,  “and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man.  Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, and the gods of others religions.  That resemblance does not exist.  There is between Christianity and other religions the distance of infinity.  Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and myself all founded empires.  But on what did we rest the creations of our genius?  Upon sheer force.  Jesus Christ alone found His empire upon live; and , at this hour millions of men will die for Him.  In every other existence but that of Christ how many imperfections.  From the first day to the last He is the same, always the same; majestic and simple; infinitely firm and infinitely gentle.  he proposes to our faith a series of mysteries, and commands with authority that we should believe them, giving no other reason that those tremendous words , ‘I am God.’  What audacity, what sacrilege, what blasphemy, in that declaration, if it were not true!”

Napoleon did not believe but he recognized the supreme and knew there was something awesome about the Man, Jesus of Nazareth.

The Homosexual Agenda vs. Homosexuality

The flower fades, but the Word of God will stand forever.   That is a paraphrase of a verse from Isaiah.  I believe that verse.  Because I believe it and much more about the Bible, I take the Bible, the Word of God from God to be truth.

The homosexual agenda is nothing more that people who have a problem in life striking out at anyone and anything that reminds them there is a problem.  It is not enough for me to have an opinion based on my beliefs. If my opinion does not line up with the agenda’s policies, then my opinion must change.

Some in the USA criticize Islamic countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia for having thought (and behavior) policeand for good reason.  We have moved to that point on several fronts in the good ole USA.  The homosexual agenda is just one of those fronts.

See this Christian movie ans support it:  http://www.silencingchristians.com/ .

As with any topic here we are open to your comments below or would you pass it on through a reading service?

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“Without a Better Vision This Administration Will Perish”

I was/am fascinated by the take that this man, John Mark Reynolds, has on President Obama’s inaugural speech.   I was at work during the speech and so I only caught snippets of it and do not have the understanding of the speech as does Mr. Reynolds.  I do like the values that Reynolds lays down that are from my view, Christian.  He has meaningful thought and comment about the speech.

I recommend you see his comments here.

As with any topic here we are open to your comments below or would you pass it on through a reading service?

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